their cigar, without either playing or making a bet.

It is not easier to distinguish a gentleman in a billiard-room than
elsewhere, but without wishing to be personal, it is desirable the
stranger should keep at a distance those individuals who are so very
familiar and friendly with every one, and who keep a piece of chalk in
their waistcoat pocket. These people cannot be insulted; they carefully
avoid squabbles, which may bring about disagreeable insinuations; they
prefer pursuing the even tenor of their way, "picking up" as many people
as they can. See yonder old man who totters across the room; his trade
is swindling, his goods are lies, his recreation is obscenity and
blasphemy; his palsied hand can scarcely grasp a cue, and yet there are
few who can excel him; by concealing his game carefully he has won, and
can win hundreds, from his victims, who, thinking nothing of his skill,
are astonished, as he pretends to be himself, at his _luck_. The young
wife tossing restlessly in her bed, and wondering what can keep her lord
so long at _business_, little knows, when he returns home flushed and
excited, that he has been fleeced of money he can ill afford to lose;
whilst the sharer of the domestic joys of the billiard shark basks in the
sunshine of his momentary good humour, as he displays with a sardonic
smile the gold which perhaps never belonged to the dupe who lost it. But
the night is closing on us; we have seen enough for once. Come away.

THE RESPECTABLE PUBLIC-HOUSE

Is situated in one of the leading thoroughfares, and is decorated in an
exceedingly handsome manner. The furniture is all new and beautifully
polished, the seats are generally exquisitely soft and covered with
crimson velvet, the walls are ornamented with pictures and pier-glasses,
and the ceiling is adorned in a manner costly and rare. Such places as
Simpson's or Campbell's in Beak-street, or Nell Gwynn's, almost rival the
clubs, and, indeed, are much smarter than anything they can show at the
Milton. Time was when men were partial to the sanded floor, the plain
furniture, the homely style of such places as Dolly's, the London
Coffee-house, or the Cock, to which Tennyson has lent the glory of his
name. Now the love of show is cultivated to an alarming extent. "Let us
be genteel or die," said Mrs Nickleby, and her spirit surrounds us
everywhere. Hence the splendour of the drinking-rooms of the metropolis,
and the studied deportme